In Chom Miller’s native Korea there’s an expression — “breaking the rock with an egg” — that means achieving the impossible. The Oceanside widow’s belief in that principle has taken her from not knowing how to read or write English two years ago, to reaching the top of her class at MiraCosta College.

Miller, 63, has lived in this country for 35 years — getting by for most of that time without knowing how to read or write. But when her husband, former Navy pharmacist Philip Miller, died in 2010 after a 15-year battle with multiple sclerosis, she knew she would need a college degree to earn a living wage.

The problem was, she had never earned a high school diploma in Korea or the U.S. The learning curve would be steep, but she had the time.

“My mother taught me there is nothing impossible in human life and you can do anything if you put your mind to it,” Miller said of the challenge.

At MiraCosta Community Learning Center, she surprised herself by quickly earning her G.E.D. (high school diploma equivalent). Then, with the encouragement of the college’s tutoring coordinator Jon Fuzell, she dove into college classes and has been earning As and Bs ever since.

For the past two semesters, Miller has been on the President’s List, meaning she was in the top 7 to 8 percent of the class with a 3.5 GPA or higher.

“Most students who are second-language learners are very shy and afraid to open up their armor and take a chance, but not Chom,” Fuzell said. “She was an exceptional student from the moment she arrived. She’s assertive and she’s not afraid to ask questions and admit she doesn’t understand something. She studies, does her homework and is focused on the task. She is so determined, nothing is going to stop her.”

Tacked up on the walls of her immaculate home in northern Oceanside are notebook pages filled with study notes. Miller said she keeps English grammar and other notes in spots around the house where she may spend a few minutes — washing dishes, cooking, even going to the bathroom — so she doesn’t waste a minute that could be spent studying.

Her goal is to move back to Korea after she sells her home and finish her bachelor’s degree there so she can teach English.

Miller said the last few years have been heartbreaking and difficult, but she’s accustomed to hardship and was taught by her mother from a young age to see every obstacle as something to overcome.

Born during the Korean War, Miller grew up in extreme poverty with her mother and five younger siblings. She worked each day from 4 a.m. to midnight at a small food wagon in her native Busan. It was there in 1977 that she met her future husband, who was then an 18-year-old Army lieutenant. Six months after he returned to the United States, he sent for the 27-year-old Chom Sun and they married in San Francisco in 1978.

Miller said she found work initially cleaning hotel rooms and washing dishes. Her limited English skills made for some comic mishaps. One day she tried walking to work on a wide road that was actually a freeway. Another time, she brought home a can of Crisco shortening for dinner, thinking it contained the fried chicken pictured on the label.

After Philip Miller left the Army, the couple moved to Michigan where he went to school full-time to become a pharmacist. Chom supported them both working as a waitress and a bartender (she earned her bartending degree by memorizing details about hundreds of liquors that she had translated into Korean).

In 1989, Philip Miller joined the Navy, but after five years in the service he began having mobility problems. Just 45 days after the 37-year-old lieutenant was posted to Japan, he could no longer walk. He was discharged and sent back to the U.S., where Chom became his full-time caregiver. He died in November 2010 at the age of 52.

“When my husband passed away, I had nobody,” she said. “I had spent all my time taking care of him. Now I had 24 hours a day to do something, besides the few hours of sleep.”

Today, Miller still cries when she talks about the heartache over losing her husband, but the experience has also made her determined to capitalize on whatever time she has left. For now, that means filling every hour possible with learning.

In an essay for an English class this spring, Miller wrote that her once-sharp memory isn’t what it used to be, but she has no doubt she will succeed.

“If anyone can do it, I can do it,” she wrote. “Because of my age, it is going to be my last and greatest challenge of all."